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Unformatted text preview: St. Margaret of Hungary 1216 Am J Psychiatry 151 :8, August 1994 Images in Psychiatry Princess Margaret of Hungary, 1242-1271 P rincess Margaret of Hungary had one of the first well-documented cases of an eating disorder. Her history ( 1 ) is from a complete copy of depositions by witnesses who gave evidence in the process of beatification, which began less than S years after her death. In the thirteenth century, after a Tartar invasion, King Bela IV made a vow that if his land should outlast the catastrophe, he would dedicate his daughter Margaret to the service of the Lord. When the Tartars left, the king built a new Dominican convent on the island of Hares for Margaret, the dearest daughter. This island, now named St. Margaret, is in the Danube River at Budapest. Margaret excelled in everything she did-her studies (she learned to read and write in Latin and Hungarian) and all the undesirable chores of the monastery. To an utterly heroic degree, she practiced the austerities of fasting,...
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